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Available From UC Press
Magic, Monsters, and Make-Believe Heroes
How Myth and Religion Shape Fantasy Culture
Magic, Monsters, and Make-Believe Heroes looks at fantasy film, television, and participative culture as evidence of our ongoing need for a mythic vision—for stories larger than ourselves into which we write ourselves and through which we can become the heroes of our own story. Why do we tell and retell the same stories over and over when we know they can’t possibly be true? Contrary to popular belief, it’s not because pop culture has run out of good ideas. Rather, it is precisely because these stories are so fantastic, some resonating so deeply that we elevate them to the status of religion. Illuminating everything from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Dungeons and Dragons, and from Drunken Master to Mad Max, Douglas E. Cowan offers a modern manifesto for why and how mythology remains a vital force today.
Douglas E. Cowan is Professor of Religious Studies and Social Development Studies at Renison University College. He is the author of Sacred Terror: Religion and Horror on the Silver Screen, Sacred Space: The Quest for Transcendence in Science Fiction Film and Television, and, most recently, America’s Dark Theologian: The Religious Imagination of Stephen King.
“The scope of Douglas E. Cowan’s examples is astonishing—no stone went unturned in this collection of tales. The perennial love of fairy tales and the ubiquitous grasp that Disney has on the imagination of students is balanced nicely with the more hard-core gaming and role playing. There is something here for everyone.”—Cathy Gutierrez, author of Plato's Ghost: Spiritualism in the American Renaissance
“Cowan manages to take stories that are at the extreme end of familiarity—fairy tales that we all know from childhood, and which have been made into movies countless times—and make them come alive in ways that are genuinely fresh and insightful, showing clearly their relevance for our time and proving that they deserve serious study of precisely the sort he offers in this book.”—James F. McGrath, author of Theology and Science Fiction
“Cowan manages to take stories that are at the extreme end of familiarity—fairy tales that we all know from childhood, and which have been made into movies countless times—and make them come alive in ways that are genuinely fresh and insightful, showing clearly their relevance for our time and proving that they deserve serious study of precisely the sort he offers in this book.”—James F. McGrath, author of Theology and Science Fiction